Real Estate Q & A

Sept. 16, 2013

Access for Disabled Tenants

Q.I have been living in a rent-stabilized apartment since 1981. Now I am old and sick and need to get around in a wheelchair. There are six steps to the elevator in the lobby. The basement can be reached from a ramp on the street, but the door at the bottom of the ramp is locked for security reasons. The landlord says I just have to call the superintendent when I need to use the ramp, but he is often not home when I need him. Is the landlord required to give me a copy of the basement door key or build a ramp to the lobby for me?

A. Landlords are required to provide what the law calls a “reasonable accommodation” for tenants with disabilities, according to Adam Leitman Bailey, a Manhattan real estate lawyer. “But the law does not dictate specifics as to what these accommodations must be,” he said.

The landlord must provide the tenant with 24-hour access to the building, but “just because a tenant thinks something in particular is the answer to the problem does not mean that the landlord has to adopt that particular solution,” Mr. Bailey said. If, for example, the landlord gave the superintendent the ability to unlock the basement door electronically through a smartphone application, and required the super to always be available to take a call, most courts would find the landlord had done enough, he said. “The solution has to be both effective and reasonable,” he added.

Maintenance for Combined Units

Q.We recently bought a small studio next to our one-bedroom, put a door between the apartments, and essentially now have a two-bedroom apartment. But we are paying maintenance on the two apartments as if they were never combined. There is a similar apartment in the building that has fewer shares — and pays less maintenance — for the same size apartment as ours is now. Can we get our maintenance reduced?

A. “The short answer is no,” said Leonard Ritz, a Manhattan co-op and condominium lawyer. Maintenance payments are based on the number of shares allocated to each apartment, he said, and the share allocations were made when the co-op was formed by the sponsor.

“While the size of an apartment is one factor in making the allocations, it is not the only criteria that the sponsor would have used,” Mr. Ritz said. Since shares have already been issued for the two apartments before they were combined, they cannot be simply eliminated now, even if the total number of shares for the combined apartment is more than the shares allocated to a two-bedroom of similar size in the building.

Removing an ‘Ex’ From the Lease

Q.There are two names on my rent-stabilized lease: mine and my ex-husband’s. But he no longer lives in the apartment, has not contributed to the rent for over a year, and all of his personal documents — tax returns, voter registration, driver’s license and car registration — have his new address on them. I also have an order of protection against him. How can I get his name removed from the lease?

A. “In order to have the ‘ex’s’ name removed from the agreement, the letter writer would need the permission of all parties concerned,” said Debra S. Cohen, a real estate and civil rights lawyer in Westchester. “That would include the landlord and the ex.”

While New York law allows the holder of an order of protection to prematurely end a tenancy, that statute does not provide for the automatic removal of a cotenant from a lease, Ms. Cohen said. The reason, she said, is because each individual named on a lease is fully liable for the payment of all rent and other tenancy related obligations, regardless of whether an individual resides in the apartment.

Since one of the lessees still lives in the apartment, Ms. Cohen said, there may be some resistance on the part of the landlord to change the names on the lease. In addition, she said, laws governing rent-stabilized tenants do not readily provide for the removal of a party’s name from the lease without a court order or a determination from the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal to that effect.